


Some With Traps

by Hrafnsvaengr



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, I'm bad at tags..., M/M, Right?, That's a thing people tag with, nothing graphic though...obviously, this is only rated Teen because there's some mention of killing people, uhhh...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 00:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5646694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hrafnsvaengr/pseuds/Hrafnsvaengr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuck on a mission together, Barton's getting on Barnes' nerves. Barton's an idiot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sara_holmes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_holmes/gifts).



> “If it proves so, then loving goes by haps;  
> Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”
> 
> William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)

“Are you sure that camels are safe to ride? This doesn’t  _ feel _ safe.”

Clint had been complaining for at least an hour and it was getting on Bucky’s last nerve. It was lucky for the archer that Buck had a fair number of nerves to get on, but he didn’t seem to realise that it was still a limited resource.

“You jumped off a building yesterday. And now you’re worried about safe,” Bucky replied, not actually posing it as a question.

“It was just a small one! Besides, you caught me, remember?” Clint said, still glaring at the beast he was riding as though it were actually made of tigers. “And really, that’s much less dangerous than falling off a camel. At least the building won’t trample me too.”

Bucky sighed, it was going to be a long day.

***

“Why are we riding camels again?” Clint had managed a whole twenty minutes of silence. Bucky was very proud.

“Because HYDRA is expecting trucks and helicopters.”

“Right…” Clint fell silent again. For a whole ten seconds. “And why do Captain Spangles and the Tin Man get to ride in an air conditioned chopper while we’re on camels?”

“Because Stark doesn’t like you and it’s his helicopter.”

“What do you mean? Stark loves me! We’re best bros! He offered to set up my PVR last Christmas.”

“Is that the same time you told him you were ‘great at boats’?”

“Yes, but I don’t see what that--”

“Then two months later you crashed his boat into a bridge?”

“Oh… Well that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

Bucky sighed and shook his head, “I’m not allowed to tell you,” he said finally, sounding fed up with the whole thing.

“Not allowed to tell me? Come on! I’m great at secrets!”

No words are required from Barnes to tell Clint precisely what he thinks of that.

***

They had arrived at the HYDRA base another hour of Clint complaining later. It had become clear to Barnes quite quickly that the best option was simply to ignore him. Eventually he’d get bored and shut up. He’d got bored, that was true. Then he'd complained about being bored as well as the heat.

The inside of the base was deserted, filled only with sand, the cinders left behind by bonfires of burnt paper, and a single coffeepot, woefully barren of both coffee or power with which to make more.

“James. Why are we still here?” Clint was now resorting to complaining over the radio. He’d tried shouting at first, but he’d quickly realised that that gave Bucky a fantastic excuse to ignore him. “It’s hotter than a fucking oven in here.”

“It’s also hotter than a celibate oven.”

There was silence over the radio for a long moment before Clint replied incredulously, “Did you just--Barnes, was that a joke? Did the Winter Soldier just make a joke?”

He was answered by silence on the line.

“Barnes? Bucky? You still there?”

Still no answer.

“Okay, really James, are you there?”

“Yes.”

“You little shit! I thought you’d found HYDRA or someth--SHIT!” Clint’s voice was cut off by a raucous crashing sound followed by a long ominous silence. Bucky was about to demand a status report when Clint’s voice broke over the line again, “Fuck!  _ Really?! _ ”

“What? Status report!” Bucky was moving quickly now, following the radio ping they’d set when they had split up so they could find each other in the obscenely cliché labyrinth that was the HYDRA base.

“Status report? You want a fucking status report? The status is that my leg is caught in a fucking bear trap! That’s the fucking status report.”

Bucky froze, frowning. “Repeat? It sounded like you said your foot was caught in a bear trap.”

“ _ My foot _ .” Clint was punctuating each pair of words with a gritting of teeth which was audible over the radio, “ _ Is caught. In a. Fucking. Bear. Trap. Barnes. _ ”

Rounding a corner, it took Bucky a moment to take in the scene. He could analyse threats in an instant, but this, this was something different. As Clint had said, his foot was indeed caught in a bear trap, the teeth biting through his clothes and blood leaking out.

“This is the worst mission ever. And I’m including the one where you tried to shoot me.” Clint was glaring between his trapped foot and Bucky, hands working trying to prise the jaws of the trap apart.

“You’re an idiot, you know that, right?” Bucky’s eyebrow was quirked, the slightest turn of his lip giving hint to a smirk lying just beneath the surface.

“Help first, then insult.”

Bucky strode over quickly and prised the jaws of the trap apart. It hadn’t been an actual bear trap, of course. A real bear trap would have taken off Clint’s foot midway up his calf. Instead, this was a smaller trap of a similar design built so a person wouldn’t be able to open it without some heavy clamps. Or a metal arm. Either one would work.

The two of them began their awkward shuffle out of the base, Clint’s arm wrapped about Bucky’s shoulder, his bloody and useless leg strapped in a tight splint Bucky had tied.

“You know, this is still probably a better mission than the time you actually shot me,” Clint gritted through his teeth. He’d taken a shot of painkillers from their emergency supplies, but it still only dulled the pain when his leg was jostled. That wasn’t going to stop him from being a pain in Buck’s ass though.

“You think?”

“Yup. At least this time you’re helping me hobble from the building instead of trying to light me on fire.”

“You remember that mission very differently than I do.”   
  
“I hear that a lot.”

Clint stopped, a confused look coming over his face.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked, eyebrows furrowing into deep creases on his forehead.

“I’m going to faint.” And, true to his word, Clint slumped heavily against Buck only a moment later, deadweight held up only by the strength in his metal arm.

Even as he picked up the now unconscious man, slinging him over his shoulder in a rough fireman’s carry, Buck’s hand tapped his radio earpiece, tuning it to the team channel.

“Break-break. Medevac to grid Niner-Whiskey. This is Winter calling Flight. One urgent patient not ambulatory. Will release purple smoke upon egress of facility. No resistance found.”

Bucky paused for a moment waiting for a reply. It was possible they were too far underground for the signal to penetrate. He repeated the message. “Break-break. Medevac to grid Niner-Whiskey. This is Winter calling Flight. One urg--”

“Buck? What’s happened? We’re on our way.” It was Steve. The line was faint and mostly static, but he could still make him out.

He ran toward the desert again. He hadn’t remembered starting to run. The blood from Clint’s leg oozed lazily down his arm and shoulder. “Steve. Clint’s been injured. He’s unconscious. We need immediate evac at the front door. HYDRA’s gone. They abandoned the base and burnt everything, but they left a trap behind.”

“Understood,” came the reply. Just one word, then dead air.

Once Buck reached the door and was standing out on the sandy soil, he reached behind his ear and pulled a large smoke bomb out of Clint’s belt. He pulled the pin and tossed it a few yards off. Within ten seconds there was a huge billowing plume of vivid purple smoke bruising the clean blue sky.

“Inbound. We see your signal.” That was Tony, “Touchdown in 5.”

Within ten minutes, they were back in the air, Clint buckled onto a foamboard stretcher, Tony at the helm flying as fast as the ship could take them.


	2. Chapter 2

Twelve minutes into the flight, Clint’s breathing had become shallow; thirty-four minutes in, Clint's wound had begun to darken, the swollen flesh gaining a dark pallor; fifty-nine minutes after initial pickup, Clint was being carried into the base’s medical wing. He was pale, his breathing had a coarse crackle, and to each of them it was obvious what had happened. The trap was poisoned.

“I know where to find the people who can cure him—”

“I don't care if you know the way to Timbuktu, you're not going on a solo mission to take out a HYDRA base on your own. Not a chance, Buck.”

It was then that Tony walked into the small conference room, face buried in a glowing holotablet. “It's what I was afraid of,” he swiped a hand across the tablet and the image swept into the air above the table. A grid of hexagonal blocks, each with a small wriggling circle inside them. “It's a virus. One that infects the host and makes nanites.”

“Clint was infected by robots?” Steve asked incredulously.

“Not quite. It's a regular virus that was programmed so the infected person’s body builds tiny robots which wreak havoc.”

Without another word, Bucky stood and went to the door. Steve stood and called after him, “Buck! Where the hell are you going?”

Over his shoulder he replied, “You cried havoc and now I'm letting slip the dogs of war. I'll be back in less than ten hours.”

Tony shook his head and laughed, “Who would have thought the Tin Man knew Shakespeare.”

***

It was an hour to fly to the base deep in the mountains which were locally called _Bjeshkët e Namuna_. The Accursed Mountains. Not ones to be too on the nose, these HYDRA goons were. If he were to have thought on the fact, he wouldn’t have been sure whether he strictly speaking had authorisation to take the plane. Nor whether he was allowed to fly it. Oh well. What were they going to do? Take the plane back and tell him not to assault a HYDRA base?

It was only a matter of an hour before the base was cleared. It would have been longer, had the base not had a conveniently small amount of air in it and a tight airlock on it. The fact that he evacuated the oxygen filters was beside the point.

He’d got inside, downloaded the base’s files which hadn’t been deleted yet by an automatic protocol triggered when no lifesigns had remained in the facility, then found the small phials containing a few millilitres each of a clear serum eloquently named Q-609-GJOA.

He’d seen this weapon before. He was there when it was first tested. He’d been the one using it. Before.

***

The year was 1984. The small phials of J-608 and J-609 were tucked into a pouch strapped to his belt. He’d been dropped several kilometres outside the town of Iqaluit, far in the Canadian arctic. From there it was a series of chartered planes to get to his destination. Gjoa Haven. Why he was to test J-608 and J-609 in Gjoa Haven, he didn’t know. He wasn’t instructed to care, so he didn’t. He did his job.

J-608 had had less than satisfactory results, only infecting one-in-four lethally. J-609 on the other hand had been a wild success. 100% uptake, 0% contagiousness, and 94% lethality. With him there, the lethality had become 100% with only a small delay.

They had synthesised a cure for J-609 shortly after his return. They had given it the codename, as they always did in such cases, of its first successful test site. The cure was similarly labelled, replacing the J of the agent itself with a Q. Thus had been born J-609-GJOA and, in much smaller quantities, Q-609-GJOA.

It was first used in the field a tincture added to a draught of beer drunk by some political agent or another in 1987. The Asset had been seven blocks away before the draught had been drunk. He was seven thousand kilometres away, once again in a dreamless stasis before the Target had died, his organs slowly liquefying as they were dissolved by swarms of nanites.

The woman who had caught him tipping J-608 over a large container of salted fish had been quieted before she could raise an alarm. He still remembered her face. Her glasses had broken under his foot as he silently slipped away. A faint crunch of broken glass marring the perfection of his work. No one but him to hear it anyway.

***

The base was in flames, the data was being remotely uploaded to the servers Stark had set up, and the small phials of Q-609-GJOA were tied down on the seat next to him. He had made sure nothing else in the base would be of use, then torched it. He’d found a chair there. One they had used to ensure the Asset was suitably pliant. It was tucked away down a hall with the stencilled letters **KAZERMË/КАЗАРМА** in white paint. He would be back early if the air currents didn’t delay him. He couldn’t afford to be late. J-609-GJOA was nothing if not punctual.


	3. Chapter 3

Another day, another hospital room. It was glamorous being Captain America, or Thor, or even Black Widow. Being Hawkeye? Not so much. They always went to big reward ceremonies and parties with rich people. Hell, by this point, Steve probably had enough keys to cities to start his own country. Not Hawkeye though. He always ended up watching the team graciously accepting awards in his honour on television from the overstarched bed of a hospital.

They always gave him credit. He didn't begrudge them that at all. It'd just be nice sometimes to not end up facing a smiling nurse at the end of a mission.

Someone off to his left was jabbing angrily at the buttons of his IV machine. He waited for a minute or two to open his eyes, trying to figure out who was winning. It ended in what sounded like a frustrated stalemate and Clint opened one eye to peek at the culprit.

“Barnes? What the hell? You're not a sexy nurse! I call bullshit on this hospital's standard of care.” He couldn't help himself. Of course he teased Barnes. That's what they  _ did _ . His dry lips cracked painfully as he spread them into a grin, his eyes opening wide.

“Shit. And here I thought I was turning up your sedatives. Now I have to deal with you awake.” Bucky smiled slightly, merely a slight uptick at the corner of his lips. “How are you feeling, Barton?”

Clint looked down at his body, carefully nested in thin hospital sheets, his leg wrapped in heavy bandages. “Better than when you shot me, but if you're asking to sleep with me, Barnes, I think it's going to have to wait until after the narcotics wear off.”

Buck sighed the sigh of a man with saintly patience dealing with a tedious child. “I'll go let the doctor know you're fine. The team will want to see you too, I imagine,” he said as he turned to leave.

Clint stopped him, “Wait! Is everyone else… What I mean is, did anyone else…”

“We're all fine, Clint. Just you.”

Clint's eyebrows knitted together as he watched Barnes leave the room. He couldn't remember the last time James had actually called him by his first name.

***

The wound which would ordinarily have taken four to six months to heal had taken Clint only seven weeks, most of which was spent in his rundown apartment in Brooklyn. He’d got his leg in a cast and a pair of crutches and been told to come by the clinic every day for reconstructive therapy. He went a few times a week at first, then realised that all the therapy was was a waste of time. Sure, it meant he wouldn’t heal in the two weeks he’d been promised. So what? Two weeks, seven weeks, six months, no matter what he was going to be out of commission. Whenever he was out of commission, the rest of the team took care of things. They didn’t really need him, truth be told. They had their superheroes and supersoldiers enough to go without the carnie for a month or two.

The real bugger of it all was how they kept stopping by unannounced to “see how he was doing”. They thought he was wallowing again. They were probably right, not that he’d ever tell a single one of them that.

Natasha had been by thirty-seven times including fifteen times with beer. Tony had been by a dozen and once he attempted by e-conference until he remembered that Clint didn’t have a computer. Steve had been by a handful of times, but he seemed...odd lately. He seemed to fuss too much over Clint when he was over. At first he thought that the Star Spangled Popsicle had had the hots for him, but he’d quickly thrown that idea away. It was more like Steve had decided that Clint was his dumbass little brother. And Buck? Hadn’t visited once. Well fuck him then.

It was a Wednesday. Or Tuesday? Whatever, and Clint had just gone to grab a beer from the fridge when there was a stately knock at his door. He knew that knock. That was Steve. He knocked like he was preparing to take a girl courting to ye olde ice cream shoppe under the watchful eye of her parents.

“Let yourself in!” he called, slumping back down in his couch, grumbling at it’s deflated stuffing.

The door opened, and sure enough it was the golden boy of the team, Steve Rogers standing on the other side of it. “I just came to--”

“To see how I was feeling. Yup. Just like the past six times you came.”

Steve ignored the attitude, plopping himself down on the other end of the couch. He sighed and stayed silent for a long moment before speaking, “You need to talk to Buck. He’s being an idiot.”

“What? Why? How?” Clint spluttered, “No. He’s  _ your _ lost puppy. You take care of him.”

“But Clint,” Steve grinned his damned pearly white grin, “You’re great with dogs!”

Clint took a long drink of beer and flicked the cap over his shoulder into the sink. He sighed, “You know, sometimes I hate you, Rogers.”

“Love you too, Barton.” Steve stood and went to the fridge, bending down to peer in, “Now where are those beers?”

***

It turned out that Clint didn’t need to go find Bucky; instead Barnes came to him. With flowers. What. The fuck.

When he’d opened the door, a hand had shoved the bouquet of irises at his face and the owner of the hand had mumbled a quiet “SorryIdidn’tcomebysooner, hopeyou’reokay.”

Clint had invited him in, put the flowers in a vase of water--okay, he’d put them in a coffeepot full of water, so what?--and they sat on the couch in silence.

Barnes had been the one to finally break the silence by mumbling “Glad to see you’re okay. I’ll just be going.”

Clint had stopped him from leaving by calling out, “Hey Barnes, what was the big secret reason that we were on that mission together?”

“Oh...that...” Barnes stopped, not turning around, “Well it was just--”

“Because I asked Tasha a while ago and she said she hadn’t heard of any secret objectives for you.”

“No, well it was--”

“So then I asked Steve and he said that you hadn’t told him anything either, but he wasn’t sure.”

Barnes was silent as Clint stood and paced over as he spoke.

“So  _ then _ I did some digging and turns out you’d asked Tony to make sure that I wasn’t allowed on the helicopter, and that you’d be my escort.”

“No, I--”

“So basically what I’m thinking is that you must have done it on purpose. As if maybe you didn’t hate me. As if maybe you kind of liked me a little.”

“But--” Bucky was interrupted one last time by a gentle embrace, Clint’s arms looping around his waist from behind, his prickly unshaven chin resting on Barnes’ shoulder.

“If that’s the case, I just wanted you to know that I kinda like you too, Barnes. Even if you are a celibate oven.”


	4. Epilogue

“So how long do you think they’ll keep pretending they still hate each other?”

Natasha grinned, not looking over at Steve. Instead, she was watching Barnes and Barton bickering like schoolboys. “As long as they think they can. They’d probably get married in secret if they figured out how to hide the rings.”

“You think?” Steve smirked, arms crossing over his chest, “And how long do you think we should pretend we haven’t been putting them together on missions all this time to get them to hook up?”

Natasha raised a neat eyebrow at him, “Why, Captain! Are you suggesting we be dishonest? That’s not very neighbourly of you!” she paused, putting a hand to her ear, “Wait, what’s that? Do I hear… Yes, listen! It’s the sound of a bald eagle crying!”

“Stuff it, Romanov.”

***

Barnes jabbed a finger, frowning at Barton, “And just how long do you think it’ll take them to figure out that we’re faking?” His voice was a low angry whisper but a grin glinted in his eyes. He and Clint had taken to hiding their affectionate moments this way. Not a single one of the team had figured it out yet.

“Them? They couldn’t figure it out if we had signs on our backs.”

“So is it dinner at my place or yours tonight?” He waggled his finger and gestured wildly with his other hand as he spoke.

“Mine. Steve is getting suspicious of always seeing me near your place.” Clint pointed at him threateningly with an arrow, trying to keep his expression suitably livid.

“Pizza? At seven?”

Clint finally raised his voice into a shout, “Fine!”

“Fine!”

They stalked off in opposite directions, leaving Steve and Natasha in amused silence.

“Idiots.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy it! It was a lot of fun putting together. A lot of stressful, stressful fun. :P


End file.
